


Robert the Eighth

by Lithosaurus



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25647727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lithosaurus/pseuds/Lithosaurus
Summary: I wrote this a few months ago after watching a bunch of english history docs. I decided to polish it up and post it. It’s Bobby B’s life if GRRM took even more inspiration from the war of the roses. (Please don’t hate me if you’re Catholic)
Relationships: Lysa Tully Arryn/Robert Baratheon, Robert Baratheon/Cersei Lannister, Robert Baratheon/Desmera Redwyne, Robert Baratheon/Elinor Tyrell, Robert Baratheon/Illaryia Fregar, Robert Baratheon/Margaery Tyrell
Kudos: 12





	Robert the Eighth

_An excerpt from Maester Myron’s ‘The Shortest Dynasty’ written in 956 AC_

“…Perhaps the most poignant remnant of the Baratheon Dynasty was the hypocrisy of marriage. A longstanding point of contention between the Targaryen rulers and their Westerosi subject has been the subject of bigamy. The Faith of the Seven holds marriage sacred as a lifelong bond between a man and woman. The Valyrian practice of taking multiple wives to produce multiple heirs was seen as abhorrent to the religious leaders. While the practice was given up by the Mid Dynasty Targaryen kings, the idea of one wife for one man was cast aside for the first Westerosi king; King Robert Baratheon the Usurper. He married no fewer than six times and had extramarital affairs estimated to be in the hundreds.

A brief description of his six marriages follows:

283-298AC Cersei Lannister:

With the longest marriage of his King Robert’s wives and remembered as the most beautiful, the Light of the West was raised by her powerful father believing that she would marry Crown Prince Rhaegar. Following the War of the Usurper, she was instead wed to the traitor. Within the first year of marriage, she gave birth to Cassanna Baratheon. While the exact nature of their contention remains a mystery, The Black Princess herself claimed that her mother resented Robert for supposedly naming her after the deceased Lyanna Stark. However, Contemporary sources all site his late mother as namesake. Regardless, the Queen and Princess loathed one another.

Queen Cersei much preferred her younger children Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen Waters. During the War of the Bastards, it was revealed that the children were, in fact, the result of an incestuous relationship with her own twin brother Ser Jaime the Kingslayer. Upon the truth coming to light, Westeros was plunged into conflict. The multiple alliances that resulted in the strange three way war greatly weakened the nobility of Westeros. All three of the titular bastards were slain as well as thousands of soldiers, both of King Robert’s brothers, and the Hand of the King Eddard Stark.

Following Lannister defeat in the war, her marriage to the king was eventually annulled by the High Septon as part of the peace treaty and she returned to Casterly Rock. Cersei Lannister lived out the rest of her days isolated in the Rock. While her death remains mysterious, the diary of a cook claims she was poisoned by her own brother to spare her the long death of a ‘wasting disease’. Further speculation suggests that she was dying of consumption.

298-301 Margery Tyrell

Surviving letters of Cersei Lannister refer to her only as ‘the smirking tart’. While only fourteen year old when she first was suggested as a marriage, Margery quickly proved herself. She was integral to the conspiracy to reveal the Lannister incest and, despite her incredible youth, personally began to manipulate the king with her sexuality. Following Cersei’s capture at the close of the war, Margery personally oversaw the queen’s captivity. Margery enjoyed visiting the captive to relay the development of the peace talks which would eventually cripple the Lannisters. She also boasted of achieving what Cersei would not, delivering a true born male heir.

This claim was somewhat undercut upon the birth of Olene Baratheon- four months after her marriage to the king. Contemporary sources claim that her voluminous wedding gown was designed to hide her growing belly. Margery’s victory was short lived in the end. At a tourney in Highgarden, King Robert was grievously injured while jousting. The shock sent Margery into an early labor of a stillborn son. Whether it was the grief of losing his son, the pain of his injury, or her own scheming nature, Robert began to turn on his young wife shortly after. She was executed within the year under the charge of conspiracy to commit treason, adultery, and attempted murder of Cassanna Baratheon.

302 Elinor Tyrell

Romanticized accounts of the period claim that King Robert truly loved Margery and was haunted by grief for her death until his dying days. While no concrete evidence exists, his next wife appears to support the claim. Margery’s cousin and lady in waiting, Elinor Tyrell had been her constant companion. Portraits of the two women are often confused for one another and the correspondence between the Hand of the King and Elinor’s father mention her resemblance of the late queen as a positive. Other sources claim Robert spoke of her resemblance to Lyanna Stark. Regardless or the reasons for the marriage or who Elinor resembled, she gave birth to son Eddard Baratheon within a year of the marriage. The realm’s joy over a true born heir quickly turned to sorrow as Elinor died only a few days later of childbed fever.

306 Illayria Fregar of Braavos

Illaryia is most often mentioned as a footnote in the lives of Robert’s three legitimate children. Between the death of Elinor and his marriage to the daughter of Braavos’ sealord, his relationship with his children deteriorated. He mistrusted his daughters for their mothers and doted upon his young son. Cassanna struggled under her father’s loathing. She had spent her younger years as his treasured only child. She spent many years at Storm’s End, the ancestral seat of house Baratheon, mainly forgotten by the court. Olene, perhaps by nature of her youth, adapted better. She ingratiated herself to her younger half-brother and made herself his keeper. In surviving letter to her father, she wrote that she recognized her ‘unfortunate birth from my sinful mother’ and claimed that ‘my love for my brother saw be my atonement’. Whether this was a charade to keep herself in the good graces of her father or honest self-degradation is unclear.

Into this complex family was thrust Illayria. As Robert’s daughters were unsuitable and he had only one son, his advisors pressured him to take another wife. A foreign wife was eventually agreed upon. Sealord Fregar controlled massive trading networks as well as a large portion of the Westerosi debt in the Iron Bank. His 33 year old maiden daughter was sent to King’s Landing as a living treaty. Unfortunately, even the censored portraits from the time show Illaryia as being plain or, in the words of the king, ‘the ugliest thing on two legs until pigs learn to walk upright’. She additionally spoke no Westerosi. The marriage lasted less than a year before being annulled.

As part of the marriage agreement, Illaryia was given holdings in the Stormlands where she lived after the annulment. Years afterwards, letters between her and the king show that she had learned Westerosi and in fact had a friendly relationship with her one time husband. While she never remarried, she became a competent liege and several nobles from the area boast the Titan of Braavos on their sigils in memory of her. In the end, she in fact outlived her husband and many of his children with her peaceful life in the Stormlands.

306-308 Desmera Redwyne

The same year as his marriage to Illayria, Robert married another of Margery’s cousins and ladies. Desmera was only fifteen when her father sent her to King’s Landing and some sources claim that she didn’t know she was to become queen until the day of the wedding. The marriage was mostly peaceful but also mostly symbolic. The teenager spent most of her time in Storm’s Landing, while her husband, now in his forties, governed in King’s Landing. Cassanna’s diaries recall Desmera fondly and says that the few years she had with her stepmother at Storm’s End were the happiest of her life. The two women were of similar age and became fast friends. The King’s chosen heir to Storm’s End, his cousin Tomas Estermont, was often seen riding through the Rainwood with them and in fact kept the two women on his council. Unfortunately, this would be his downfall.

A groom claimed to have seen Tomas and Desmera together in a stable. The rumor shook King’s Landing. After three years of marriage without a child, a problem amplified by their near complete isolation, King Robert had grown tired of his new wife. He rode for Storm’s End with a small army. Queen Desmera and Lord Estermont discovered they were to be executed upon welcoming their king with honors. The executions sparked riots in the Stormlands and King’s Landing as well as solidifying Robert’s nickname of the Kinslayer King, a moniker that had been whispered since his defeat of his cousin, Prince Rhaegar.

309-311 Lysa Tully

Despite being four years his junior, Lysa Tully was, in a way, King Robert’s stepmother. Lysa had married Robert’s foster father Lord Jon Arryn at the start of the War of the Usurper. After her husband’s death, she ruled the Vale for her young son Robert, also called ‘Sweetrobin.’ A wealthy and powerful widow, the small council put her forth as a way to solidify his power in the nine kingdoms as rumbles of discontent grew. Lysa was specifically suggested by her childhood friend and supposed lover, Petyr Baelish. Despite coming from a lesser house, Lord Baelish rose to the position of Master of Coin with the help of the influential Lady Arryn.

His climb to power culminated and was destroyed by his plot to put his own puppet onto the Queen’s throne. After a few years of marriage between Lysa and Robert, she fell pregnant and the young Prince Eddard developed a sudden illness. The queen was found in Lord Baelish’s chambers covered in blood and holding a knife. She confessed to not only carrying on an affair with the Master of Coin but in helping him acquire poison which he planned to use on the young prince. She also admitted that her unborn child was actually Lord Baelish’s and that he had conspired to put his own son on the throne after killing the king. She had killed her lover after fearing that he would kill her precious son Sweetrobin.

The trial shook the realms and sparked a dozen small rebellions. In it, Lysa broke down into tears and eventual madness, begging for forgiveness from the gods for her sins. While the king demanded her death, his remaining Small Council members and the High Septon strongly cautioned against killing his pregnant wife. Shortly after the trial concluded, Lysa gave birth to a redheaded daughter who she named Minisa and called her ‘little bird’. She was sent to Riverrun to live out the rest of her life under the guardianship of her brother Lord Edmure Tully. 

After so many marriage, battles, and betrayal’s King Robert quickly swore himself off marriage. His patronage of King’s Landing’s brothel became legendary and he kept several mistresses in the Red Keep itself. As he grew older he grew fatter and less interested in ruling the kingdom he had killed to gain. His small council ruled with a weakening grasp until he eventually died of a ruptured gut. Some more salacious sources claim his cause of death had been intercourse with a pair of prostitutes.

The crown then passed to all three of his legitimate children. The chaos of the Baratheon era, while disastrous, eased the return of the rightful dynasty of Westeros. King Aegon the VI took the throne peaceful in old age after the death of his distant cousin Olene Baratheon.”


End file.
